Introducing EveryBlock accounts

Today we’re officially launching EveryBlock accounts — our first step at letting you customize the information you see on our site. You can create a free account by clicking the “Register” link in the upper right of any EveryBlock page.

For launch, we offer three simple features to registered users: e-mail alert management, saved places and timeline display preferences. Here’s a quick rundown of each feature:

E-mail alert management

We’ve offered e-mail alerts for a long time, but they’ve been one-offs — i.e., you had to sign up for each one individually, and there was no way to manage them centrally. Now, when you sign up for an e-mail alert, it’ll be associated with your account, so you can view and manage all your alerts in one place.

(We’ve created an EveryBlock account for each existing e-mail alert subscriber. If this is the case for you, you don’t have a password yet; use the “Forgot your password?” link to get a fresh password e-mailed to you. Then you can change your password to one of your choosing.)

Saved places

This is a small but useful feature: if you’re viewing a block, neighborhood or ZIP code page while you’re logged in, you can click “Save this place” for easy access in the future. Once you save a place, it’ll always be available in the “Saved places” section of the navigation (which is only visible if you’re logged in).

Timeline display preferences

Another small but useful feature: you can now hide specific types of information from EveryBlock timeline pages. Say, for example, that you never want to see business reviews; just click the “Hide” link next to that section in the timeline, and all business reviews will be hidden from then on. You can turn them back on by going to your dashboard page (the first thing you see after you log in).

Next steps

These are just a few small features people have requested over the past few months. We’re thinking about much more substantial ways for people to customize and contribute to EveryBlock. Stay tuned, and drop us an e-mail at feedback at everyblock.com if you’ve got any suggestions.